At 3am last Wednesday, as the rain poured down, pro-Palestine students at Bristol University set up an encampment opposite a study centre on campus. But despite the cold, more sprung up over the next few nights. It's now grown to at least 20 tents, with loads of people rotating in and out.
The students are calling for their university to cut ties with companies contributing to Israel's war efforts, like BAE Systems. They are demanding divestment due to complicity in settler-colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
The movement to divest and fight for a free Palestine is much larger than university executives acknowledge. Encampment provides communal supplies, COVID-19 tests, literature on Palestinian history, protester rights, and Bristol's complicity.
Students from various universities are in contact and coordinating protests, indicating a broad network of solidarity. The students stress the straightforward moral imperative of not supporting institutions complicit in violence and oppression.
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